Masquerade

Inspiration

We wanted to, in one broad stroke, protect content creators from ad blockers and save users from shitty advertising. In short, we wanted a viable and appealing alternative to ad blocking.

What it does

Instead of removing or blocking advertising on video streaming sites, Masquerade silences and overlays ads with entertaining content. As a result, the creators and hosts of said videos maintain their income and users are still spared the irritations caused by modern marketing.

How I built it

We figured that Adblock had the right idea by providing a Chrome Extension, and so we followed suit. In addition to building an extension, we also used intelligent image scraping to build a modest database of curated content for our users.

Challenges I ran into

Tactfully manipulating the DOM commanded by video sites was frustrating. Many of them take many precautions against 3rd party manipulation of their site. Luckily, through some creative DOM hacks, we were able to achieve control of an overlay and basic video control.

What's next for Masquerade

To broker a truce between content consumers and the aforesaid creators through creative manipulation of technology.